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Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.

W. Somerset Maugham

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W. Somerset Maugham
Age: 90 †
Born: 1874
Born: January 1
Died: 1965
Died: January 1
Army Scout
Literary Critic
Novelist
Physician Writer
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
Paris
France
W. Somerset Maugham
Somerset Maugham
Periods
Perfect
Shortened
Long
Lifetimes
Would
Unnatural
Time
Measures
Determined
Lifetime
Perfection

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It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
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I'm afraid you've thought me a bigger fool than I am.
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By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.
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I [Death] was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
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Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
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If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.
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I could have forgiven it if he'd fallen desperately in love with someone and gone off with her. I should have thought that natural. I shouldn't really have blamed him. I should have thought he was led away. Men are so weak, and women are so unscrupulous.
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Her tears were partly tears of happiness, for she felt that the strangeness between them was gone. She loved him now with a new love because he had made her suffer.
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The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.
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It needs a good deal of philosophy not to be mortified by the thought of persons who have voluntarily abandoned everything that for the most of us makes life worth living and are devoid of envy of what they have missed. I have never made up my mind whether they are fools or wise men.
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No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind.
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It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.
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You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humor teaches tolerance.
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The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
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In heaven, when the blessed use the telephone they will say what they have to say and not a word besides.
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If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.
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Art for art's sake makes no more sense than gin for gin's sake.
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First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.
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